Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY – REVISITED The past is past, but survives in and all around us, indispensable and inescap- able. Three decades after his classic The Past Is a Foreign Country, David Lowenthal re-examines why we love or loathe what seems old or familiar. His new book reveals how we know and remember the past, and the myriad ways – nostalgia or amnesia, restoration, replay, chauvinist celebration or remorseful contrition – we use and misuse it. We transform the past to serve present needs and future hopes, alike in preserving and in discarding what nature and our ancestors have handed down. Whether treasured boon or traumatic bane, the past is the prime source of personal and collective identity. Hence its relics and reminders evoke intense rivalry. Resurgent conflicts over history, memory, and heritage pervade every facet of public culture, making the foreign country of the past ever more our domesticated own. The past in the Internet age has become more intimate yet more remote, readily found but rapidly forgotten. Its range today is stupendous, embracing not just the human but the terrestrial and even the cosmic saga. And it is seen and touched and smelled as well as heard and read about. Traumatic recol- lection and empathetic re-enactment demote traditional history. A clear-cut chronicle certified by experts has become a fragmented congeries of contested relics, remnants and reminiscences. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make Lowenthal’s new book an essential key to the past that we inherit, reshape, and bequeath to the future. David Lowenthal is Emeritus Professor of Geography and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He is a medallist of the Royal Geo- graphical, the Royal Scottish Geographical and the American Geographical Societies, a Fellow of the British Academy and honorary D.Litt. Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 2010 he was awarded the Forbes Lecture Prize by the International Institute for Conservation. His books include West Indian Societies (1972), The Past Is a Foreign Country (1985), The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1998), and George Perkins Marsh, Prophet of Conservation (2000). © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY – REVISITED David Lowenthal © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521616850 © David Lowenthal 2015 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Lowenthal, David. The past is a foreign country - revisited / David Lowenthal. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-85142-8 (Hardback) – ISBN 978-0-521-61685-0 (Paperback) 1. History–Philosophy. 2. History. I. Title. D16.8.L52 2013 901–dc23 2013000789 ISBN 978-0-521-85142-8 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-61685-0 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information TABLE OF CONTENTS List of illustrations page ix List of permissions xiv Acknowledgements xv List of abbreviations xvii Introduction 1 An authorial credo 2 How my past became foreign 3 Finding the foreign country 5 Frequenting the foreign country 8 Themes and structure 15 PART I WANTING THE PAST Introduction 23 1 Nostalgia: dreams and nightmares 31 Nostalgia far and near 39 Looking back to Europe 42 Medical homesickness 46 Sentimental longing to retro irony 49 2 Time travelling 55 Goals in the revisited past 63 Explaining the past; Searching for the Golden Age; Self-aggrandizement; Changing the past Risks of revisiting the past 72 The past disappoints; Inability to cope with the past; Problems of returning to the present; Endangering the temporal fabric 3 Benefits and burdens of the past 80 Benefits 82 Familiarity; Guidance; Communion; Affirmation; Identity; Possession; Enhancement; Escape Valued attributes 110 Antiquity; Continuity; Accretion; Sequence; Termination © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information vi Table of contents Threats and evils 128 The grievous past; The stifling past; The menacing past PART II DISPUTING THE PAST Introduction 145 4 Ancients vs. Moderns: tradition and innovation 147 The Renaissance and the Classical heritage 152 Distance; Imitation and emulation; Revival as creation From La querelle to the Enlightenment 163 Decay of nature; Effects of printing; The new science; Science vs. Art Victorian Britain 172 Innovation and retrospection; Medievalism and neoclassicism; Dismay at thraldom to the past; Whig history: reusing the past American Founding Fathers and sons 184 Autonomy and generational freedom; The eternal youth of America; The useless and crippling past; Ambivalence; Nostalgia for Old World antiquity; The debt to the Founding Fathers; Centennial comforts of the colonial past 5 The look of age: aversion 206 The organic analogy 211 Antipathy to age in humans and other beings 213 The decay of the world and its features 226 The superiority of youthful nations 230 Rejection of age and wear in artefacts 232 6 The look of age: affection 241 Old things should look old 247 Decay demonstrates and secures antiquity 254 The beauty of patina 259 Varieties and implications of aesthetic decay 268 Ideas evoked by decay 275 PART III KNOWING THE PAST Introduction 289 Reifying the chimerical past 293 7 Memory 303 Habit, recall, memento, reverie 305 Personal and shared 310 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information Table of contents vii Confirmability 315 Forgetting 318 Revising 320 Memory, memoir, and identity 324 8 History 333 History is less than the past 336 History is more than the past 340 Confirmability 343 Western and other histories 351 Chronology and narrative 353 Past vs. present: emergence of the foreign country 358 History, fiction, and faction 367 History and memory 378 9 Relics 383 Perceiving the tangible past 386 Virtues and defects of reliquary knowledge 389 Interconnections 398 Artefacts as metaphors in history and memory 401 Changing routes to the past 404 PART IV REMAKING THE PAST Introduction 411 10 Saving the past: preservation and replication 413 Preservation 413 Identifying, displaying, protecting 429 Removal 440 Copying and replicating 448 11 Replacing the past: restoration and re-enactment 464 Restoration 465 Restorative cycles in human and terrestrial history; Restoration in the arts; Recovering nature Re-enactment 477 Varieties of replay; Enduring the past’s authentic hardships; ‘Period rush’ vs. rectifying the past Conclusion 494 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-85142-8 - The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited David Lowenthal Frontmatter More information viii Table of contents 12 Improving the past 497 Fabricated pasts 499 Possessive and partisan pasts 502 Altering past scene and substance 514 Adaptations; Additions; Commemorations Aggrandizing and abridging 534 The past embellished and amplified; The past concealed and expurgated; The errant past deplored and displayed Anachronizing the past 554 Antiquating; Modernizing; Conflation Acceptability 576 Epilogue: The past in the present 585 The omnipresent past 586 The eviscerated past 588 The past made present 594 The past held to blame 598 Accepting the past 603 Collective responsibility for the past 604 Select bibliography 611 Index 639 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org